1 December 2013

Ukrainian extra-parliamentary extreme right behind the provocations at the President Administration

A few extra-parliamentary extreme right groups took part in the attack on the President Administration in Kyiv today. Currently, there is no one reason to believe that these groups were somehow associated with the parliamentary radical right-wing Svoboda party or even with its paramilitary neo-Nazi units like C14.

One of these groups is "Tryzub" (Trident), which was originally formed as a paramilitary unit of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists but then became an independent organisation.

Also seen by the President Administration is Dmytro Korchyn'sky, leader of the "Bratstvo" (Brotherhood) party. Korchyns'ky is widely considered an agent provocateur, and his "Bratstvo" already took part in several actions that were meant to provoke police suppression of peaceful protests. Moreover, it is said that Korchyns'ky taught a course at the explicitly pro-Putin "Seliger" summer camp in Russia.

Dmytro Korchyns'ky

The link between Korchyns'ky and the pro-Putin movement in Russia seems quite alarming. According to Inna Bohoslovs'ka, who has discontinued her membership in the ruling Party of Regions on the 30th of November, the provocations by the President Administration were orchestrated by the authorities and can be seen as part of the Russian strategy to instigate separatism in Ukraine, like the Russians did in Moldova and, more recently, Georgia.

UPDATE 1: It seems that individual members of Svoboda and C14 took part in the attacks on the President Administration, but it seems that Svoboda's leadership did not sanction the attacks. Furthermore, Svoboda's leader Oleh Tyahnybok was one of the leaders of the opposition who tried to persuade the crowd by the President Administration to stop their actions and join the peaceful protests on Maidan.

UPDATE 2: The newly discovered video footage suggests that not only right-wing extremists were provoking the police. They might have been joined by dozens of hooligans (titushkis) who were paid by the authorities.

8 comments:

For a while, Dmytro Korchyns'ky was listed as a member of the Highest Council of Aleksandr Dugin's International Eurasian Movement - one of Russia's most rabidly anti-Ukrainian movements. See https://www.academia.edu/214792/_O_

I wonder about how this is "part of the Russian strategy to instigate separatism." I can see how instigating separatism in Crimea and some other southern/eastern regions was strategic during a more pro-western administration (such as Yushchenko's), but with Yanukovych as president, is this necessary? I would tend to see it as part of a multi-pronged set of Russian strategies: (a) to court Yanukovich and/or other oligarchic power structure elements (with carrots and sticks), (b) to foment anti-western sentiments in eastern/southern Ukraine, (c) to foment discord all around, provoking the far right and police when appropriate (such as now), etc.

Putin hates Yanukovych, so the Russian strategy may involve separating particular Ukrainian territories like they did with "Abkhazia" and "South Ossetia".

If you read Russian, you can read here about some worrying developments: http://censor.net.ua/news/261758/vlast_gotovit_vtoroyi_severodonetsk_ekstrenno_sobirayut_oblsovety_yugovostoka_ukrainy_obnovleno

In his major book "Osnovy geopolitiki" (Foundations of Geopolitics, 4th edn. Moscow: Arktogeya, 2000), Dugin writes that "[t]he sovereignty of Ukraine represents such a negative phenomenon for Russian geopolitics that it can, in principle, easily provoke a military conflict." (p. 348). Apart from a other similar statements about Ukraine as a whole ("Malorossiya" and "Okraina," p. 799), he, in "Osnovy geopolitiki," noted, with reference to Southern Ukraine, that "[a]n absolute imperative of Russian geopolitics on the Black Sea shores is the total and unlimited control by Moscow of [these shores] over their whole stretch - from the Ukrainian to the Abkhaz territory" (p. 349).